Volleyball Update

[Dane Pound]

Dear Alumni, Friends, and Family of UAlbany Volleyball:

 

The second half of the conference schedule has gotten underway now. Following our loss at UNH, we really got after it with a long and hard week of practice. As I've come to expect with this group the past couple of season's, we respond the right way to challenges and they usually come out swinging following a loss. We certainly did that going into UMBC this weekend. This team has set a goal to be the most improved team in the conference as we move along. Three weeks ago, we pulled out a tight 5 game match with UMBC at home. On Sunday, we played much better against them in a 3-0 sweep (30-22, 31-29, 30-21). Our serving was the best that it's been in weeks, and we really set the tone early on with our blocking. Senior Blair Buchanan's thoughts: "This weekend began the second half of conference play as we traveled to UMBC. Playing teams for the second time gives us an opportunity to show how much we have improved from the first time we played each team. After a pretty intense week of practice, I feel like we made great improvements. Our middles and right-sides did a better job of shutting down one of their best hitters, freshman Ashley Oscars, by holding her to a .095 hitting percentage. I am very excited to see how we will continue to progress these next few weeks! This upcoming weekend will be another opportunity for us to show Binghamton and UNH what strides we have made as a team."

 

Our next three home matches should be awesome ones to attend. Our next two, UNH on Saturday, and Binghamton on Monday, are against the two teams that beat us at their place. They should be great matches to watch! Our last home match, Nov. 3rd against Maine will be Senior Night for Blair Buchanan, Ashley DeNeal, Kristin Fiorillo, and Shelby Goldman. They've meant a lot to our program and hopefully many of you will be able to come and see their last few home matches and show them how much they've meant to us. As for Shelby, she is now 22 kills from tying the great Patty Munhall-Blacklock's school career kills record of 1,538. If you can't make it in person, the UNH and Maine matches will be on the radio http://www.albany.edu/~wcdb/ and the Binghamton match will be televised by Time Warner Cable. Hopefully many of you can make it in person and get the volume cranked up and give us one heck of a home court advantage in the PE Gym as we make a push towards the conference tournament and win our 3rd consecutive regular season conference championship!